KRN-210 · Linux Kernel Core · Advanced
CFS to EEVDF Internals — full syllabus
The fair scheduler in depth, the move to EEVDF, and what changed for latency-sensitive workloads.
Who this course is for
Kernel and performance engineers tuning latency-sensitive services who need to know what the fair scheduler actually does today — including what EEVDF changed and which tuning knobs are gone.
Prerequisites
- KRN-201 or strong scheduler background
- Comfort reading kernel/sched/ source
- cgroup v2 basics
Course outline
Day 1 — CFS mechanics
- vruntime, weights and the nice-to-weight mapping
- The red-black tree and min_vruntime
- Sleeper fairness and wakeup preemption
- Group scheduling and cgroup CPU controllers: cpu.weight, cpu.max
- Reading scheduler state from /proc and sched debug interfaces
Day 2 — Load tracking and balancing
- PELT load tracking and its decay behaviour
- Load balancing across CPUs and scheduling domains
- NUMA balancing and automatic migration
- Energy-aware scheduling basics
- Where balancing goes wrong and how to see it
Day 3 — EEVDF and honest tuning
- Eligibility, lag and virtual deadlines
- What EEVDF replaced and why the old heuristics went away
- Which scheduler sysctls remain, which are gone, and what to use instead
- Measuring fairness and latency under controlled contention
- Capstone workshop
Hands-on labs
- Lab: observe vruntime and weights under controlled contention and verify the weight ratios you configured
- Lab: watch PELT signals through scheduler tracepoints while migrating a load across CPUs
- Lab: throttle a service with cgroup cpu.max and measure the resulting latency distribution
- Lab: compare CFS vs EEVDF behaviour for a wakeup-heavy workload across two kernel versions
- Lab: audit a real system's scheduler sysctls against a current kernel and retire the dead knobs
Capstone project
Take a contended, latency-sensitive workload and make it fair and predictable on a current kernel: cgroup CPU configuration, measured fairness evidence from scheduler traces, latency distributions under load, and a written account of which tunables you changed and which you removed — with trace evidence attached to every claim.
What you leave with
- A working model of CFS and EEVDF mechanics
- PELT and load-balance tracing skills
- cgroup CPU control that does what you expect
- An up-to-date sysctl map: what exists, what is gone
Upcoming dates
| Dates | Where | Seats | Early bird | Regular | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Oct – 20 Oct 20263 full days | RiyadhIn person · KAFD Conference Centre | 4 of 14 | — | SAR 9,000 | |
| 25 Oct – 27 Oct 20263 full days | Kuwait CityIn person · Al Hamra Tower | 9 of 14 | — | KWD 740 | |
| 1 Nov – 3 Nov 20263 full days | MuscatIn person · Knowledge Oasis Muscat | 4 of 14 | — | OMR 920 | |
| 1 Nov – 8 Nov 20266 half-days | Gulf bandLive online · 09:00–13:00 GMT+3 | 14 of 20 | — | US$1,750 | |
| 2 Nov – 4 Nov 20263 full days | OttawaIn person · Kanata North Tech Park | 9 of 14 | — | CAD 3,260 | |
| 9 Nov – 11 Nov 20263 full days | TorontoIn person · MaRS Discovery District | 4 of 14 | CAD 2,930until 10 Oct | ||
| 9 Nov – 16 Nov 20266 half-days | Europe bandLive online · 09:00–13:00 CET | 3 of 20 | US$1,580until 10 Oct | ||
| 16 Nov – 18 Nov 20263 full days | LondonIn person · Shoreditch Works | 9 of 14 | GBP 1,680until 17 Oct | ||
| 16 Nov – 23 Nov 20266 half-days | Americas bandLive online · 13:00–17:00 ET | 8 of 20 | US$1,580until 17 Oct | ||
| 23 Nov – 25 Nov 20263 full days | BerlinIn person · Factory Görlitzer Park | 4 of 14 | EUR 1,990until 24 Oct |
Book a seat, or bring this course to your team
Seats can be reserved online; private delivery runs on-site or live online, adapted to your stack.
Questions about fit or prerequisites? Email hello@kernelsystems.academy. To save this syllabus, print this page to PDF from your browser.